Merchant Navy sails off with the Jubilee Stakes

Coolmore and Aidan O’Brien have had a relatively quiet week by their normal high standards but they finally landed a big one at this Royal Ascot when Merchant Navy, a 4-1 shot, held on by a short head from City Light in Saturday’s Diamond Jubilee Stakes.

The four-year-old colt, a leading sprinter with Kieren Maher in Australia, was Coolmore’s big money purchase in the spring and was having only his second start since arriving in Ireland but he justified whatever he cost by landing Ascot’s most prestigious sprint.

With Ireland having beaten Australia at rugby earlier in the afternoon, here the two nations combined to win together as the Merchant Navy Syndicate, a collection of Aussies who all made the trip and have retained a share in the colt, outnumbered the ‘lads’ and their hangers-on.

You could not argue this year’s race was not international; an Australian horse trained in Ireland beating a French one, City Light, beating an American, Bound For Nowhere, with a British one, last year’s winner The Tin Man, in fourth.

But it ended before it began for the 5-2 favourite Harry Angel when he got wound up in the stalls and, having appeared to get a hind leg stuck on the back gate, walked out of the gates in last. “He went mad in the stalls, it happened very quick,” said his bitterly disappointed jockey Adam Kirby.

“He’s got quite a nasty puncture wound on a hind leg,” said his trainer Clive Cox. “He started the race on three legs like a dog with his leg up. Adam couldn’t have known.”

Maher, who travelled over to watch the race, was delighted despite the fact his name was not now in the trainers’ column. “It’s great for the horse,” he said, “and for the owners. They sold him for a fairly hefty sum, so from my point of view you can’t have your cake and eat it.”

O’Brien, who was leading trainer for the week, said: “We thought it was kind of an impossible task for him as he was so wrong at the weights. He was 12lbs wrong. Really I came here prepared that he couldn’t win. I can’t tell you how happy we are.

“He is relaxed, genuine, a good mover and has a good mind. He is very docile. He has no problem in any way. He is really a joy to do anything with. We don’t do a lot with him at home. He is booked to go back home (to stud in Australia’s spring) but wouldn’t it be great to go for July Cup?”

It was Ryan Moore’s fifth winner of the week so he was Qipco top jockey of the week for the eighth time in nine years. His other was with his British boss Sir Michael Stoute who concluded his best Ascot for a while with a fourth winner when Crystal Ocean, a short-priced favourite, joined Poet’s Word, Expert Eye and Eqtidaar on the honours board.

The four-year-old, owned and bred by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, only faced four rivals but galloped home strongly in the Hardwicke Stakes to beat Red Verdon by two and a half lengths.

It was Stoute’s 11th Hardwicke and when asked where Crystal Ocean rated with the Dartmouths, Telescopes and Harbingers he quipped: “I don’t know – I never galloped them with each other.”

Describing the winner as a straightforward, uncomplicated horse he paid tribute to Sir Evelyn’s late sister, Renee Robeson. “Renee ran Southcourt Stud and organised all the matings – this is the fruit of her labour.”

Andrew Black, the co-founder of Betfair, will not have many more poignant winners than Arthur Kitt who needed every ounce of tenacity to withhold Nate The Great by a neck. The Camelot colt’s dam, Ceiling Kitty (his 2012 Queen Mary winner) died giving birth to him and was brought up by a piebald foster mare.

Recalling his birth, Black’s in-house vet at Chasemore Farm, Patrick Sells said: “Everyone knows the emotion around a foaling and then we had the panic knowing something was going wrong, the sorrow when you know you can’t save the mare and the relief when you save the foal after five minutes of resuscitation. It was then followed by the joy of seeing it canter round a paddock with its foster mother.

“Andrew bred him to win this race and it is very special.”

Admitted he was more emotionally attached to Arthur Kitt than any other horse, Black said: “We put out a call for a foster mare and we still have her today. Arthur Kitt was brought up by her and fostered foals have different personalities. He was much more friendly than your average horse and he’d come over to you when the others wouldn’t.”

I cannot recall any trainer making a better start to their careers than Lambourn’s Archie Watson, 29. But after seeing Nate The Great touched off he thought it would be at least 12 month and possibly years before he would get so close to an Ascot winner.

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But, like everything else in his career so far – he has already had 100 winners – the second season trainer only had to wait 80 minutes before Soldier’s Call won the Windsor Castle. The 12-1 shot won by half a length and Watson’s ambitions for the colt do not stop there; he hopes to take him to the Breeders’ Cup at Churchill Downs in November.